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Evidence for Isafuba
1 pieces of evidence found.
Id DLP.Evidence.1877
Type Ethnography
Location 20°16'3.52"S, 30°56'1.82"E
Date 1891-08-01 - 1891-08-30
Rules 4x6-15 board. Mancala-style game. Can be played with up to ten people.
Content Account. of Bent, who records the game from the village of Barazimba in Zimbabwe, nearby Great Zimbabwe where he excavated: "A
relation of Umgabe's rules over a fantastic kraal,
called Baramazimba, hard by this rock ; its huts are
situated in such inaccessible corners that you wonder
how the inhabitants ever get to them. Huge trees
sheltered the entrance to this village, beneath which
men were seated on the ground playing isafuba,
the mysterious game of the Makalangas, with sixty
holes in rows in the ground. Ten men can play at
this game, and it consists in removing bits of pot-
tery or stones from one hole to the other in an un-
accountable manner....This game is played in different places
with different numbers of holes — sometimes only
thirty-two holes dug in the ground — always in rows
of four. It has a close family relationship to the
game called pidlangooly of India, played in a fish —
the sisoo fish, made of wood — which opens like a
chess-board, and has fourteen holes in two rows of
seven, small beans being employed as counters. The
same game hails also from Singapore and from the
West Coast of Africa, where it is played with twelve
holes and is called wary." Bent 1895: 85-86.
Confidence 100
Ages Adult
Spaces Outside, Public
Genders Male
Source Bent, J. 1895. The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland; Being a Record of Excavation and Exploration in 1891. London: Longman, Green, and Co.
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